29 January, KUALA LUMPUR – The National Housing Policy (NHP) 2018-2025 is seen as the mechanism to improve the country’s housing sector, besides assisting those in the Bottom-40 (B40) income group to purchase houses at reasonable prices.
The objective of the NHP 2018-2025, unveiled on Monday by the Housing and Local Government Ministry, was to gather public and private sector resources to solve the demand and supply mismatch in the housing sector.
Malaysian Rating Corporation Bhd chief economist Zahidi Alias believed the focus provided by the housing policy could potentially eliminate the shortcomings in the housing industry in line with the government’s aspiration to elevate Malaysia to developed nation status by 2023.
In terms of policy implementation, the focus will be on a holistic housing industry, especially on supply and demand imbalance that resulted in a drastic increase in house prices.
I believe there are other issues which can also be examined holistically, such as the size of the house and its surrounding areas, he told reporters on the sidelines of the 2019 Malaysia Economic and Strategic Outlook Forum, here today.
Zahidi said the government’s focus in implementing the NHP was to ensure those in the B40 group, who were already burdened with high cost of living, can be asissted with house purchases.
We hope with this policy in place, the B40 group experience would find some relief in future and own quality houses at low prices and in good surroundings, he said.
Meanwhile, Alliance Bank chief economist Manokaran Mottain said the NHP lacked a single all-encompassing agency to implement and monitor affordable housing development.
One thing, I expect, is for a single agency to take care of this policy. At the moment, affordable housing involves so many agencies. You don’t need so many agencies, he said.
Manokaran added that the government planned to consolidate all these agencies but thus far, there has been no developments on the matter.
– BERNAMA